"Together with the inherited habit of property, the well-descended have and transmit an inherited knowledge of the laws which govern its acquisition and its maintenance: laws older than legislation; as old as property itself; as old as man; a part of his primitive wisdom; always and everywhere the common lore of the established and endowed. If Rasey had inherited or imbibed this knowledge, perhaps he would have been more cautious. 'Beware of unjust gains,' says an Eastern sage, an ancient member of our Aryan race; 'for it is the nature of such, not only to take flight themselves, but to bear off all the rest with them.' 'Do not think,' it is set down in the book of Kabus, a compendium of Persian practical wisdom, 'Do not think even a good use of what has been ill acquired can make it thine. It will assuredly leave thee, and only thy sin will remain to thee.' "The well-born would not dare to amass a fortune by such means as Rasey uses; amassed, they would not expose it to such hazards. 'The same word in the Greek'--I am citing now an English worthy, the contemporary of our New-England fathers--'The same word in the Greek--[Greek: ios]--means both rust and poison; and a strong poison is made of the rust of metals; but none more venomous than the rust of the laborer's wages detained in his employer's purse: it will infect and corrode a whole estate.' "A man's descent is written on his life yet more plainly than on his features. In New England you shall see a youth come up from the country to the metropolis of his State with all his worldly goods upon his back. Twenty years later you shall find him as much at ease in the position he has retaken rather than gained, as he was in the farm-house where he was born, or on the dusty road he trudged over to the scene of his fortunes. His house is elegant, not fine; it is furnished with paintings not bought on the advice of the picture-dealer, with a library not ordered complete from the bookseller. He is simple in his personal habits, laborious still, severe to himself, lenient and liberal to those who depend upon him, munificent in his public benefactions, in his kindly and modest patronage. If he enters public life, it is not because he wants a place there, but because there is a place that wants him. He takes it to work, and not to shine; lays it down when he can, or when he must; and takes hold of the nearest duty, great or small as may be, with the same zeal and conscience. Such a man is called a self-made man. He is what ages of culture and highest discipline have made him,--ages of responsibility and thought for others.